Month: February 1998

States around the nation are beginning to embrace electricity deregulation. Last November, the Illinois’ State Legislature passed its own deregulation bill. But environmentalists complained that it did little to promote clean and efficient energy use. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Frenkel reports on a new proposal to improve Illinois’ deregulation law:

Each year, the League of Conservation Voters ranks members of Congress on their environmental voting record. It publishes those findings in a report called the National Environmental Scorecard. Today (Tuesday), the group released its 1998 Scorecard. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Hammond reports:

A recent study in the medical journal Pediatrics reports that many girls in the U.S. are entering puberty much easier than normal. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Suzanne Elston discovered, exposure to environmental chemicals may be the culprit:

Nearly every American city has an Elm Street. That’s because the elm was once one of the most abundant species of trees in North America. It was beloved for its distinctive shape and crown of limbs that arched over city streets. Unfortunately, starting in the 1930’s, at least a hundred million elms are estimated to have been wiped out by Dutch Elm disease. Relatively few elms managed to survive the epidemic. But now, Cincinnati is in the vanguard of a movement to bring back the elm. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Hirschberg reports:

The city of Ann Arbor, Michigan has been able to work magic with its trash: turning virtually half of it into reusable products. That’s caught the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency. They’ll be highlighting 20 communities around the country that have had successful recycling programs in an effort to improve recycling nationwide. Ann Arbor is one of those cities. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Edelson Halpert traveled there to see how it’s working:

Most Americans think of national parks as majestic areas like Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon. But in recent years, a greater variety of landscapes have been deemed by the federal government to be worth protecting. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Steve Frenkel reports on an effort to designate a largely industrial area near Chicago as a national heritage area: